Tag: governance

Unity, Faith, and the Body of America

While riding on the bus here in DC recently, I’ve noticed another in a series of ad campaigns by atheist, agnostic, and non-theist groups.  The Freedom From Religion Foundation has been particularly persistent and prominent.  Their basic advertising technique displays a quotation advancing an anti-religious view from a series of important Americans throughout time.  They seek to best advance a basic message that religion and government have no part.  While I agree that a strict separation or wall between the two is necessary, I would not agree to remove moral teachings with a religious focus altogether from the process.  Real religion and spirituality, not its watered-down, adulterated, self-serving imitation is never plentiful.

Meeting Candidate Obama, Three Years Later

I met Barack Obama in September of 2007.  Before I go any further, I need to qualify that I wasn’t granted much more than a handshake.  Still, at the time I remember being quite excited at the prospect.  The venue was the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta and as one of several volunteers I was assigned specifically to crowd control.  A large gathering of people being correctly corralled and directed into the room where the event would be held, I settled in like everyone else to enjoy the presentation.  After a lengthy number of speakers that came before Obama, most notably the R&B singer Usher, the candidate himself finally appeared.  Unsurprisingly, he was as good as advertised and I found myself nodding along with every point he made.  Oprah had but recently endorsed him, though he was still very much in a distant second place to Hillary Clinton.

Opinion Piece: Rahm and Obama

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This is pure political punditry, iow, I’m bullshitting.

But what a perfect topic to bullshit over.  Not a completely unrewarded activity.

We’re somehow supposed to figure out how the folks in the Executive Branch are getting along, how many people working in the Executive Branch  other than President Obama are acting in such a way, politically, that their action affects our lives insofar as the politics of legislation and governance.

Now if we had some transparency in government, I suppose we could just find that out and move on.

Alas, we don’t.

So we are reduced to speculating about our Executive Branch.

Are we witnessing a power struggle?

Probably every day, given the culture of D.C.

So in my opinion (as after all this is an opinion piece), until we have some real, honest transparency in our government, we as citizen bloggers will have to publicly bumble around until we get the answers ourselves.  And we will, oh we will.

Ha!

Republicans, The Loss of Balance, Loss of Sanity, Loss of Relevance

When you are involved in politics there is often a level of paradox. There is the need to stand firm on your agenda, yet there is the requirement of being open to compromise if you are to get that agenda enacted. There is the need for cold, hard eyed realism, yet there must be passion to push forward, even when it looks as though you are going to lose. It all seems to come down to the idea of balance, the Yin and the Yang, constantly opposed, yet each needed to balance the other, if there is to be a harmonious whole.

Originally posted at Squarestate.net

This Is What Should Have Happened: Afghanistan

I just caught this and will say, this is what should have occurred after we invaded and rid the country of the Taliban rule, and while we went after bin Laden and al Qaeda!

Will it be to late?

I think it is already, and Hopefully I’m Wrong, Very Wrong, this time:  

November 5th’s Diary Today. What Do We Do Now?

Hey! Remember back when Obama was elected and the Democrats swept?

Well, that’s all in the past now. The future lies before us.

What say you? Let’s have the Dems-in-the-DC-Bubble set how that plays out.

Pelosi, Hoyer, Reid, Blue Dogs, … who can doubt that the Dem Leadership is deeply on our side? Who could possibly be more vigorous in protecting the Constitution? In enacting the people’s will? In protecting the people’s interests?

I dunno. Unless it’s the people. ‘Cause come to think of it, the Dem Leadership ain’t been doing that, in the main. Yep, comes down to us people.

So, bearing in mind that “as the twig is bent, so grows the tree”; recognizing that this very day starts the shaping of our future government; how shall we immediately train the emerging government so it bears a beneficient fruit for the people?

Surely, “business-as-usual” among our Electeds has rendered our nation barren, bleak, and endangered. Whatever has been done in the past, can be done no longer. And chief among those things from the past is…

Well, first things first. Let me digress for a moment…

The Law of Opposites, Golf and Governance

The more they try to get it right, the more they get it wrong.  Anyone who plays golf knows the rule of opposites.  If you try to hit the ball to the right, it goes to the left, hit to the left, it goes right.  If you try to hit UP on the ball it goes down, hit DOWN on the ball and it goes UP!  This all defies conventional wisdom and is completely wrong in the annals of common sense.

Conservative ideology is filled with conventional wisdom, common sense, and the famous “gut feeling.”